I've created a paginated version of the CBS's report that's web accessible, which you may find useful. [Link]

Thanks to the coding magic of Pete Holiday, the web version of the reports I've created allows you to specify the page of the report you link to in the URL string. For example, if you want to link to page 121 of the CBS Report and page 3 of Appendix 2, use the following syntax:

They really did a good job gathering the facts and presenting the case that the story was not credible, but we already knew that. Any reasonable person could see those documents were fake and most of the bloggers who exposed it could have told you that Bill Burkett had an ax to grind. The real unanswered questions still remain. Why did CBS news division spend 5 years trying to prove that George Bush may have missed a physical and received preferential treatment in the TaNG in 1973? They cite a competitive zeal as one of their faults but why wasn’t their any of that zeal directed at the Kerry camp? Maybe on a swift boat story? Analysis of Kerry’s anti-war activities? His book the New Soldier? Why he voted against the Gulf War 91? His senate record? Anything?
It all points to CBS’s political bias. But again we already know that. So I can only conclude CBS is a liberal news organization that is competing with the other liberal news organization for viewers and figured they could trump the competition by taking down the President and getting Kerry elected at any cost. With Dan Rather taking out his final Republican president and retiring to icon status inside the halls of the DNC. If only the documents were authentic, conservatives didn’t have any voice in media and the regular folks of America would have cared they might have gotten away with it

But seriously, using my laptop (plasma) screen, I can see the cut-and-paste crop markings on the USA Today pdf and a 7th doc at Lukasiak's site. My theory is that text sentences were typed on computer, then overlaid on a page where the square "dots" had already been created digitally. Then the signatures were lifted from real scanned-in military docs and overlaid on the same doc. The sequence of overlaying may be different, but that's the basic process I see used for each memo.

There's a further wrinkle – the background blue/grey wavy patterns behind the pasted text, signatures and square dots look to me a lot like the background pattern on Martin Heldt's Home page. The source codes on that page show a watercolor_paper_tile.gif.

So, if correct, there's a connection between the fake docs and these 2 sites, and ultimately, the persons who had access to those sites. Access in a way that inadvertently pulled in the watercolor_paper_tile.gif along with the text, signatures and "dots" onto the fake doc templates.

I've had a crush do-it-yourself course on looking at the source codes of docs since Rathergate began. Does my theory make sense to any computer savvies out there?

By the way, it doesn't take a laptop screen to see the crop markings: one can also print out the docs on paper. When I first did this back in Sept. 04, I thought there was something wrong with my printer, like oily spots. But it wasn't my printer. The spots were "square". Then I saw the same marks around blocks of text and the signatures.

Could the refusal to declare forgeries be due to the fact that the reports authors, as officers of the court, would then be required to forward the report to the Texas authoities as evidence in the commision of a crime? And the criminals would be the forgers plus all those that helped perpetrate it, including those that vouched for the memo's authenticity. Likewise, could Rather's pretense in still believing the memos are real be a legal defense similar to his ca. 1989 libel trial wherein the Judge ruled in Rather's favor because Rather claimed he believed the relevant forged signature was real? Similarly, could the refusal to admit bias be a further legal backup defense to allow the claim of the absence of malice?

I'd love to see the Attorney-Client Agreement signed between Thornburgh's law firm and Viacom (or CBSnews, whoever hired the firm). Lawyers would probably say attorney/client and work product privileges reign, but logic and ethics tell me that Agreement in itself is probably a way to obstruct justice - UNLESS Thornburgh has already turned over evidence of crime to the Justice Dept or state officials.

This funny picture crossed my mind today: here at the nexus thread of the Thornburgh Report at Wizbang lies the irony. Bloggers & their guests have long ago reached the "Finish Line" and are now tossing Rathergate jokes around, while we wait… tick tick tick… wait… wait… for the authorities to catch up. The CBS/MSM horses didn't even leave the starting gate.

(I posted an item with URL formatted links, but the filtermonster ate it because of links, it seems. Here it is changed to text links, which can be accessed by copying to your address line after http colon //)

"JMS" has made interesting observations about Exhibit 2B, the fake doc "dated 04 May 1972": The Exhibit 2B released by CBS and Thornburgh's law firm KLNG is different from the 9/8/04 version first released by CBS.

Looking at JMS's animated comparison, there's also a disappearing dot. "Now you see it, now you don't". It's about half an inch above "George", slightly to the right of the last "e" in George.

CBS's first 9/8/04 crumpled version has that dot, but the new 12/31/04 version does not! The new version can be seen at both the KLNG and CBS, both modified 1/13/05 with added security measures, 3 days after the Report was issued. The KLNG version was modified early in the morning and CBS's 9 hours later.